WIP: Questoris Mechanicus Knight Paladin of House Taranis - Part 1

 

In this series I will document the painting (and transformation) of a Questoris Knight Paladin for House Taranis. This model began its days as a Freeblade.  You can see the Freeblade icon still on the carapace trim in the picture above.  This will be carefully removed and replaced with the Cog symbolizing allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Honestly, I got to re-painting before remembering to do that.

This knight appeared on the blog in May of 2016 featuring a green and white color scheme.  As luck would have it, the white panels matched the color scheme for House Taranis making it an easy task to repaint the armor. I used poster tack (a tacky putty used to hang posters on the wall, etc.) to mask areas I didn't want to get paint on and then used the air brush to carefully transform the Green/White Freeblade to the Red/White/Black livery of House Taranis. 

I had previously brought the metallic frame and the head to a decent standard, so that puts me a bit ahead on this project.  Following the airbrushing, I will have a small amount of over spray to touch up (especially on the feet) and then I'll be pretty much back where things stood with the Green and White scheme. I used GW Mephiston Red and GW Abaddon Black for the armor repaint, according to my recipe for House Taranis.

I decided to abandon the original face plate in favor of the stock Mechanicum iron skull mask.  It is stuck to the putty and primed black on the pot between the knight's legs.  A bit hard to see here. I'll probably paint it a 50:50 white/black scheme.  I'm tempted to leave the face plate off to match the couple Forge World resin heads I'm using for the other knights. Time will tell.  I need to stew on that for some time.

The shoulders are not glued on and the arms can still be removed, which will help with painting.  Given how far along this knight is, it'll be the next one I complete.  While I had the air brush out, I set to priming the other Questoris knights joining the house.  I used Vallejo Surface Primer Black (73.602) from a 200ml bottle I purchased back along from Amazon.  I found this an economical way to prime with less odor.  I have a bunch of rattle cans too that I use for terrain, but they smell much more, even when using my outside vented spray booth.

So the House Taranis project is coming along well.  I'm going to burn out painting these large knights, no doubt.  So I expect to mix in a few other projects to keep up progress on the Deathwatch, Grey Knights, and Adeptus Custodes. In fact, my Shield Captain on Dawn Eagle jetbike got primed while I was doing the knights...

I was psyched to have a new purpose for the Freeblade Paladin which was languishing on the shelf.  While I had originally envisioned a collection of Freeblade Knights, I now find something special viewing the house collections of others online.  It's impressive to see a lance of knights in the same livery marching to war!

Best wishes for your own hobby projects.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!